Dream in Denial
by malcious lufoy
Summary: Paulie has some last words to say to Lucci, but the other doesn't want to hear it. Instead, he psychologically guts him.


Title: Dream in Denial

Author: malciouslufoy (emberalda)

Pairing: Lucci/Paulie

Rating: PG-13...I guess

Genre: Drama/Angst

Summary: Paulie has some last words to say to Lucci, but the other doesn't want to hear it. Instead, he psychologically guts him.

Disclaimer: One Piece is not mine...I just occasionally play with what's in it 

A/N: Yeah, I tried reaaaal hard to write Paulie and Lucci in a happy, non-angsty way TT What you see before you is me failing horribly and instead writing an emotional wreck. Yeah yeah, I know OP isn't made for tears and sadness, but they are sooo made for angst anyway, right? Riiight.

"It's just that..."

He sneered. "You can't even say it, can you?"

Below him, the other fell silent. "Of course I can't, because it doesn't matter now, does it?" I'm hopelessly in love with you. Was.

_Was_.

Lucci loomed above him in the dark of the room, face disdainful as he looked down at him. A neatly shined black shoe tilted his head, carefully avoiding the blood that seeped through his hair. Paulie's cheek felt cold and rough against the uncarpeted floor.

Cold, dark eyes glittered above him, drilling into his brain with sharp, burning holes, the face in relief from the sharp light outside the door highlighting Lucci's features starkly. Black and white. Shadow colors of betrayal and indifference made him look so overwhelming it crushed the spirit with its shining contempt. A revelation dawns numbly on Paulie.

He's _magnificent_.

"You are pathetic. Striving against yourself to un-utter those words from your mind, pitifully trying to remove yourself from your own inner betrayal and with one look at me, you crumble thoughtlessly without shame. Your struggle makes you even more detestable because it is hypocritical."

You don't understand, it's not betrayal, you are the one who makes me this way, you are the only one who breaks it so easily, when I was unaware of this feeling before. Only when you betrayed me did I realize how unassumingly it consumed me whole. "The anger taught me, the anguish taught me, how much I fell."

A small tilt of the head shifted the features above him, the dark around Lucci's eyes moved away only to reveal two blacker irises that seemed to inflame, eating away at Paulie's apathetic inner self as he lay listless, almost lifeless on the floor. His need for passivity in this moment makes him still despite the shoe crushing his head.

"Do not blame this on me. I am not a tool for your own self-justification. I can almost taste your punitive love and it only makes me dislike you where before I was indifferent."

The word love rings in his mind over and over. Yes, love, love, being in love, lovebirds, lovely, loving, lovesick, love-starved...all _love_. Paulie shifts dull, blood-edged eyes upwards and can't help but think that this didn't really seem like love, but what else would he call this _thing_ above him, strangling away his breath?

Lucci's face was suddenly near his, the soft curl of his dark hair whispered gently against his face, the shadow of the hat making him only able to see the slight glint in the other's eyes. Paulie closed his own, whether in pain or in savored pleasure he couldn't tell. The breath in his lungs ceased to be as he almost tangibly felt this smothering aura from being so near. _Love_.

The low, sultry smooth tone washed in his ear like a black tide. "It is love. My love. I gave this to you on purpose, because I knew you wouldn't survive it."

Lips brushed his jaw gently; the rich fulsome feeling almost giving him sensory overload as his heart broke all over again. But the sensation was dull, as if it had happened so much he couldn't really even feel it affecting him at all.

"It made it easier to de-mobilize you when you would find out. Powerless to do anything in the face of your own self."

"Lucci..."

At the strained call of his name, Lucci's features cut into the harsh, acidic light, turning towards the light of the door. The clarity and sharp cut of sable eyes seemed almost to stab him with their frigid hostility. Anguish gutted Paulie deep and dark, only emphasizing this strange, stubborn emotion that flowed in his veins long after he felt dead. This suffering served only to highlight his...

**_Love_**.

Paulie looked upwards to the one above him. Love. _Love_. The word etched and burned his mind, a heathen mutation that he no longer knew after so many repetitions.

Lucci smiled pleasantly, genuinely. "You are even more pathetic if that is the only word you know with which to describe it."

Dullness arose in Paulie's brain again as he shied away from the word he really knew it was. "Stop arguing with me."

A strange light in Lucci's eye gleamed ambiguous as the shadowed face loomed inches above his, lips traveling slowly from his jaw to his mouth. Paulie closed his eyes to the darkness of the room, and breathed. The slight spicy, heavy scent spiraled in his senses, as he tasted soft, sleek lips that seemed to warm to his own and a silken tongue that seemed to delve expertly into his mouth with ease, stroking his senses into oblivion.

I wish to die.

Lucci was suddenly above him again, his whole head under the all-consuming shadow of his hat, features concealed while he loomed. "Betrayal is the name that is your own." The hard sole of the assassin's shoe scraped against his temple painfully.

"It wouldn't be too bad, if I didn't know that you..."

Silence echoed above him, Lucci's features still unreadable even though he knew what the other was going to say.

You didn't plan your shadow self getting away with this. Galley-la Lucci had no plans for me, and neither did you. And yet, still this was there, and it continued. You let it continue.

Pain burst, exploded in his right temple, jaggedly running through the rest of his head as he felt blood run quick in warm rivulets from his scalp. A quick flashing shine from a black shoe was all he caught, the tall figure towering above him unreadable in the shallow lights of the room.

His vision blurred as he attempted to focus again. The grey-black form wove and shifted before his eyes like a wavering dream. Lucci...I didn't even say it out loud! The thought passed hysterically in his mind, an almost ironic, exasperated bark of laughter forced through lips that could no longer move in pain.

The cold eyes burned with vile satisfaction, a drudge on his already smudged soul. They killed with utter apathy and cool loathing. "It never mattered if it was expected or unexpected...because it all felt the same to me either way."

A small smile lifted the corner of his mouth, arrogant and subtle. The tall figure above him seemed to melt and shift along with this concealed face, the black and grey tones hieing away and disappearing before his eyes. That small, magnificent smile was the last thing he saw in that room before he awoke.

Paulie lay unmoving in the semi-dark of his room. The small, pre-dawn light slowly peeled the walls back to a slightly less dark charcoal grey. He simply watched the ceiling slowly reveal it's true colors to him in the coming light of day. The gritty feeling in his eyes troubled him a little, it would be hard to work at maximum if he felt unrested. Paulie shifted in his bed again, face pressing down into the pillow, eyes still wide open, expression unchanging, blank. Did he sleep? These strange self-monologues in the night were getting to him...

"Paulie! Get your ass up already, no time to doze when we're understaffed as it is!" Lulu banged on the door twice, his shouts not lessened by the thick wooden door blocking off the room.

Blankets shifted around him as he slowly rose, pushing aside his bedding carefully. Paulie took his shirt off the chair beside the bed and pulled it on, the pearl-grey morning starkly draining the color from his face as the dream faded dully with the wan light. The listless expression on his face was wiped away. He got ready for yet another day of work with Galley-la.

* * *

So...what'd ya think of it? Good? Bad? Too dense? I tried to make it kind of choppy because it was a dream...and it was in the middle of the dream anyway, so I started off right away in the conversation. Was it weird? Abrupt? Tellllll me! Review


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